Saturday, November 23, 2013

Any Publicity is Good Publicity

I just realized that it's been more than a week since our last proper, documented Lesson.Since our previous lesson, stuff has happened, though.We had our 2nd Reaktor Code School on the 12th, with a room (a bit more than) full of kids and parents hacking on Turtle Roy.Then we've had a couple of interviews with the newspapers. Mila got to demonstrate her proficiency on both Helsingin Sanomat and Hufvudstadsbladet. She had a good time talking about computers and stuff with the reporters.But I think it's time to get back to business today. The question is though, what next?

3 comments:

One of my workmates linked the interview from HBL to me with the words: "you're not alone, and here's one even younger than your daughter!"

Amazing, nerdy coding? :D

I started a bit slower, at 4 (last year) she got her own laptop with own user account and own password. The first year she only been exploring the computer, set it up with cables, log in/logg of (passwords). Started to explore pikku kakkonen, buu-klubben and bolibompa: and amazed me on the way to the kindergarden with new info every now and then (earth, planets, space: and I thought she only was playing games...!).

This autumn she has join my projects as an habitant on servers I use with my students, Minecraft in school? I'm now about to start another Minecraft project for my 15-18 yo students, see if it's possible to learn programming with Minecraft. And yes, she has already decided to participate...

One good thing about Minecraft is that it seems to attract girls and boys equally. Maybe the peaceful creation work combined with actions does the trick.

I am myself a soon-to-be female software engineer (still finishing my thesis and visiting job interviews) and stumbled upon programming around age 14, at computer class. I have a fond memory of getting to explain about random number generation to a cute boy who couldn't grasp it so easily. I would have been very happy to have a parent or a relative like you as a kid since I have always felt that I would have liked to start even earlier, especially as launching games from command line and other basic command line operations were piece of cake from when I was six and got my first computer. :P